Category Archives: History of the EU

Many books have covered the ideological origins of what is now the EU. This book describes the manoeuvres of the the principal post war actors whose guile, determination and deceit contrived progressively to deprive our country of its constitution and liberty whilst pretending to engage in mere facilitation of trade ( “The Common Market”) and international co-operation. It is a thorough job, backed by detailed research with frequent facsimile documents from public archives.

From the early post war years, it traces the growth of the European Movement, saved from bankruptcy by substantial CIA funds and by American corporate money. Whilst the subjects will be familiar to most independence campaigners, the author’s angle of approach is refreshingly different.

The first part (of 11 chapters) begins with the lie of “no essential loss of sovereignty” and covers the conversion of the civil service from its politically impartial role to an agency of “government against the people”. In a role reversal, the Foreign Office devoted much of its energy to promoting the foreign European project to the British people whilst using public money to frustrate and discredit those campaigners, who knew what was really at stake.

Drawing on official records, the author makes a strong case on the balance of probabilities that Britain’s abandonment of the Black Arrow satellite launcher was part of the price of entry to the EEC, giving the French a monopoly in the European space programme. He also covers the subversion of the apparently innocent business of town twinning into a scripted process, requiring participating towns to declare allegiance to the European project.

The second part ( 9 chapters) “European Integration, the broader picture 1948 -2014” begins with a review of the ACUE (American Committee for a United Europe – funded by corporate donations) and the European Movement. It includes an in depth study of the 1975 referendum, how the process was skewed and was certainly open to electoral manipulation. Whilst this is informed conjecture, similar complaints by those taking part in later Irish referendums should alert any independence campaigner. There is an extremely interesting piece on “85 Frampton Street” , the media centre for Britain in Europe which the author visited in 2003 when a referendum on the euro currency was in the air. Campaigners should know of the scale of publicity machine available to our foes and its cosy existing relationship with the media. Bilderberg is covered in a matter-of-fact sort of way and the attempts within the Conservative party to discredit their Eurosceptic MPs.

The endpiece, entitled “The Rats” makes some proposals to break the power of the supranational corporations in the supranational state but the author has not yet fully developed his ideas. Few who experienced the reality of nationalised industries would wish to revisit them.

In the meantime, this highly original account will be extremely useful both as a readable record and as a mine of verified quotations for anyone speaking or writing on how our country came to its present state.

In this meticulously drafted book, the writer has scoured every nook and cranny, left no stone unturned, in a brave and heroic effort to seek the removal of Great Britain from the crumbling EU monstrosity ruled by an unelected, unaccountable cabal of faceless bureaucrats.

Many others have warned of the dangers of a union of European Countries. Sir Winston Churchill said: “Each time we must choose between Europe and the open sea, we shall always choose the open sea.” (Winston S. Churchill, the great British Prime Minister. Comments to de Gaulle before Normandy Landing on 06.06.1944.) He also said, “Every step that tends to make Europe more prosperous and more peaceful is conducive to British interests … but we have our own dream and our own task. We are with Europe, but not of it. We are linked but not comprised. We are interested and associated but not absorbed. And should European Statesmen address us in the words which were used of old – „Shall I speak for thee to the King or the Lord of the Host?‟ – we should reply with the words of the Shumanite woman: „Nay sir, for we dwell among our own people …‟

Jaques Delors understood that Churchill envisaged European integration only for the countries of the European continent, not for Britain (as Delors noted in Le Monde, 3 May 2000).

Lady Margaret Thatcher herself also issued a warning: “Europe is a monument to the vanity of intellectuals, a programme whose inevitable destiny is failure: only the scale of the final damage is in doubt.”

In 2002, Eric Deakins, former Labour MP and Government Minister, delivered a speech at Trinity College Dublin. The title of the motion was “This house believes that the European Union is a threat to democracy”. In his address Deakins declared: “The Treaty of Rome was the result of a subversion of democracy. The process was not transparent; peoples of the member states had no real choice; they were deceived about long-term aims.” He continued, “There is a fundamental contradiction between common law culture, where rights and power flow up from citizens to state, and Roman Law culture, where rights and power flow down from state to citizen. In making this comparison, I am mindful of Roman Emperor Justinian‟s comment: quod principi placuit legis habet vigorem (what the Emperor is pleased to command has the force of law); this could be a good motto for the Commission.

He then concluded: “The EU is not and never will be subject to the will of its peoples. They cannot vote to accept or reject policies coming from Brussels. The democratic deficit is an inevitable result of the way the EU has been and is being constructed. The EU will continue to be a threat to democracy at national and supranational levels. Democrats must fight harder against this threat. They must not retire to cultivate their gardens, leaving the field clear for the triumph of elitism and bureaucracy in the EU.”

The following editorial puts it in a nutshell: “A New Superstate”:

“Much has already been written in many places about the Convention on the Future of the European Union. Without doubt, this convention would, if its conclusions were ratified, be an enormous and significant step. Effectively, it would turn the European Union into a superstate in its own right, with the present member nations reduced to mere provinces. Although a supranational body from the beginning, the European Economic Community and its successors have at least operated according to treaties entered into by national governments; the Convention aims to go a vital stage further by establishing its own Constitution. The EU would, through this constitution, become the supreme source of legal authority over its entire territory, supplanting the member states and their own constitutions. This would be the final act in putting the United Kingdom under the control of a superstate. Whether the new state is to be called the European Union or the United States of Europe is immaterial; if it looks like a duck, waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck, it‟s a duck, whatever you choose to call it!”

We hear so much that is pro European but rarely are the Euro-sceptics given a voice. No matter how loud we shout our cries go unheard. We are the invisible majority air brushed from the media as indeed the “Prince of Detectives” has been airbrushed from history.

Several Freedom of Information requests have been placed regarding papers written by the Secret Service Agent by writers more interested in his case work on the Jack-the- Ripper murders than his prolific Christian writings and prophecies on the Union of Europe. However, it is worthy of note because these writers apparently know of the existence of papers which cannot be released even now, 122 years later. One must ask why and what a riddle, further research is needed now that the author has brought the Knight Commander and the “Seer of Dublin” back to life and full square in the public eye. He has told me that eventually he hopes to open a museum to celebrate the life and memory of this great theologian and detective, whose prophecies about Europe we would do well to heed. Otherwise, as Helmut Kohl, German Chancellor (1982-1988) said: “The future will belong to the Germans… when we build the House of Europe. In the next two years, we will make the process of European integration irreversible. This is a really big battle but it is worth the fight”(2002). Well, it most certainly is not irreversible as you will find as you wend your way through this book.

A truly gripping read from start to finish and a must for those who have never really understood the machinations of the European Union. A thoroughly researched and factual book which has taken the author almost 10 years of painstaking research and writing to complete. Ignore his words at your peril and your children and your children‟s children will reap the whirlwind. Codjoe has presented a massive case for our withdrawal from the European Union, like some barrister presenting a case against the European juggernaut. It is left to you the reader to decide on the evidence presented. “Is the future of the EU bright or dark?” Be warned and heed the following before making a decision, for indeed successive governments have been and are the enemy within.

“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear. The traitor is the plague” (Marcus Tullius Cicero 106 BC – 56BC).

John Harrison qualifed as a Chartered Accountant in 1973 and is in practice in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. John joined the National Committee on 1999 and became Honorary Treasurer in 2000. He is also Membership Secretary

Contrary to much mis-reporting of what Churchill actually advocated in terms of a United Europe, his belief was in a two-fold European solution; the first was a reconstituted ‘League of Nations’ in the UNO, to which the UK would belong, and the second a federation between France, the German Länder and Europe’s other small states but excluding the United Kingdom. He formulated this as early as 1946, at a time when France and the US were still committed to implementing a version of the Morgenthau Plan aimed at depriving her of all industrial capacity, governing the Saar and Ruhr as international zones, and reducing Germany’s population by 24m to a level at which she could only just subsist.

Churchill had revolted against Morgenthau when the plan was first proposed in Tehran in 1943. By Quebec in 1944, the US had explicitly linked a $6.5bn credit for the UK to Churchill’s acceptance of the Plan; Roosevelt, in an act of utter crassness, actually required Churchill to sign the Morgenthau Plan before they signed the credit agreement, prompting Churchill to exclaim “What do you want me to do? Get on my hind legs and beg like Fala?”. Morgenthau became occupation policy as JCS1067.

The other key influential supporter and proponent of the Morgenthau Plan was Jean Monnet, later to achieve notoriety as the ‘Father of Europe’. The Monnet Plan and Morgenthau Plan had a single shared aim; to deprive Germany permanently of any industrial capacity, and of any export capacity. Through 1945 and 1946 the US and French long-term aims of German population reduction came dangerously close to realisation; disease and starvation stalked Germany, in the wasteland ruins and in the POW camps Typhoid, Cholera and Diptheria raged. At a time when UK and French civilians has returned to pre-war nutrition levels, German civilians were subsisting on as little as 1,000 Kcals a day
– comparable to Concentration Camp rations. A great part of the problem was that 17m more Germans than calculated had to be fed in the US, UK and French zones – the 13m Germans who crossed the Elbe, 8m DPs and slave labourers, and 5m POWs who surrendered to the West were vastly in excess of expectations.

Against this background Churchill spoke at Zurich in September 1946 (RECORDING);

“.. we must re-create the European family in a regional structure called, it may be, the United States of Europe, and the first practical step will be to form a Council of Europe. If at first all the States of Europe are not willing or able to join a union we must nevertheless proceed to assemble and combine those who will and who can. The salvation of the common people of every race and every land from war and servitude must be established on solid foundations, and must be created by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than to submit to tyranny. In this urgent work France and Germany must take the lead together.”

But he made clear that Britain and the Commonwealth would not be members of this USE;

“Great Britain, the British Commonwealth of Nations, mighty America — and, I trust, Soviet Russia, for then indeed all would be well — must be the friends and sponsors of the new Europe and must champion its right to live. Therefore I say to you “Let Europe arise!””

Churchill also advocated that a United States of Europe, with France and Germany at its core, take its place alongside Britain and the great powers at the United Nations;

” There is no reason why a regional organisation of Europe should in any way conflict with the world organisation of the United Nations. On the contrary, I believe that the larger synthesis can only survive if it is founded upon broad natural groupings. There is already a natural grouping in the Western Hemisphere. We British have our own Commonwealth of Nations. These do not weaken, on the contrary they strengthen, the world organisation. They are in fact its main support. And why should there not be a European group which could give a sense of enlarged patriotism and common citizenship to the distracted peoples of this mighty continent? And why should it not take its rightful place with other great groupings and help to shape the honourable destiny of man?”

By September 1946 the prospect of mass starvation in Germany was real. The vengeful, retributive policies of Morgenthau and Jean Monnet were leading to a genocide of the German people. Churchill’s dictum that “The USA always does the right thing – eventually” proved true again when James F Bymes spoke in Stuttgart to repudiate the Morgenthau and Monnet Plans; in “Restatement of Policy on Germany” the US ditched the hateful JCS1067 and JCS1779 – the Marshall Plan – was launched.

This wasn’t quite the end. The ‘Morgenthau boys’ committed one last act of spite and destruction in breaking the German banking system, and Jean Monnet held onto both the Saar and control over German coal and steel production for many years.

But it was Britain’s conscience, through Churchill, that from 1943 to the end of 1946 spoke up to save Germany from US and French intentions for her destruction. “In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill”

I have no doubt that if we do sign the Treaty, we shall suffer some loss of sovereignty […] Adherence to the Treaty of Rome would, in my opinion, affect our sovereignty in three ways:-

Parliament would be required to surrender some of its functions to the organs of the Community; The Crown would be called on to transfer part of its treaty-making power to those organs; Our courts of law would sacrifice some degree of independence by becoming subordinate in certain respects to the European Court of Justice.

(a) The position of Parliament
It is clear from the memorandum prepared by your Legal Advisers that the Council of Ministers could eventually (after the system of qualified majority voting had come into force) make regulations which would be binding on use even against our wishes, and which would in fact become for us part of the law of the land. There are two ways in which this requirement of the Treaty could in practice be implemented:-

Parliament could legislate ad hoc on each occasion that the Council made regulations requiring action by us. The difficulty would be that, since Parliament can bind neither itself nor its successors, we could only comply with our obligations under the Treaty if Parliament abandoned its right of passing independent judgment on the legislative proposals put before it. A parallel is the constitutional convention whereby Parliament passes British North America Bills without question at the request of the Parliament of Canada; in this respect Parliament here has in substance, if not in form, abdicated its sovereign position, and it would have, pro tanto, to do the same for the Community.

It would in theory be possible for Parliament to enact at the outset legislation which would give automatic force of law to any existing or future regulations made by the appropriate organs of the Community. For Parliament to do this would go far beyond the most extensive delegation of powers, even in wartime, that we have experienced and I do not think there is any likelihood of this being acceptable to the House of Commons.

Whichever course were adopted, Parliament would retain in theory the liberty to repeal the relevant Act or Acts, but I would agree with you that we must act on the assumption that entry into the Community would be irrevocable; we should have therefore to accept a position where Parliament had no more power to repeal its own enactments than it has in practice to abrogate the Statute of Westminster. In short, Parliament would have to transfer to the Council, or other appropriate organ of the Community, its substantive powers of legislating over the whole of a very important field.

(b) Treaty-making Powers
The proposition that every treaty entered into by the United Kingdom does to some extent fetter our freedom of action is plainly true. Some treaties, such as GATT and O.E.E.C., restrict severely our liberty to make agreements with third parties and I should not regard it as detrimental to our sovereignty that, by signing the Treaty of Rome, we undertook not to make tariff or trade agreements without the Council’s approval. But to transfer to the Council or the Commission the power to make such treaties on our behalf, and even against our will, is an entirely different proposition. There seems to me to be a clear distinction between the exercise of sovereignty involved in the conscious acceptance by use of obligations under our treaty-making powers and the total or partial surrender of sovereignty involved in our cession of these powers to some other body. To confer a sovereign state’s treaty-making powers on an international organisation is the first step on the road which leads by way of confederation to the fully federal state. I do not suggest that what is involved would necessarily carry us very far in this direction, but it would be a most significant step and one for which there is no precedent in our case. Moreover, a further surrender of Parliamentary supremacy would necessarily be involved: as you know, although the treaty-making power is vested in the Crown, Parliamentary sanction is required for any treaty which involves a change in the law or the imposition of taxation (to take only two examples), and we cannot ratify such a treaty unless Parliament consents. But if binding treaties are to be entered into on our behalf, Parliament must surrender this function and either resign itself to becoming a rubber stamp or give the Community, in effect, the power to amend our domestic laws.

(c) Independence of the Courts
There is no precedent for our final appellate tribunal being required to refer questions of law (even in a limited field) to another court and – as I assume to be the implication of ‘refer’ to accept that court’s decision. You will remember that when a similar proposal was considered in connection with the Council of Europe we felt strong objection to it. I have no doubt that the whole of the legal profession in this country would share my dislike for such a proposal which must inevitably detract from the independence and authority of our courts.

Of these three objections, the first two are by far the more important. I must emphasise that in my view the surrenders of sovereignty involved are serious ones and I think that, as a matter of practical politics, it will not be easy to persuade Parliament or the public to accept them. I am sure that it would be a great mistake to under-estimate the force of the objections to them. But those objections ought to be brought out into the open now because, if we attempt to gloss over them at this stage, those who are opposed to the whole idea of our joining the Community will certainly seize on them with more damaging effect later on. Having said this, I would emphasise once again that, although these constitutional consideration must be given their full weight when we come to balance the arguments on either side, I do not for one moment wish to convey the impression that they must necessarily tip the scale. In the long run we shall have to decide whether economic factors require us to make some sacrifice of sovereignty: my concern is to ensure that we should see exactly what it is that we are being called on to sacrifice, and how serious our loss would be.

To read the full paper, click here (Lord Kilmuir’s letter can be found on pages 75-76)

I was a few years younger than this audience when I first heard about the institution which is now the European Union. I was on a school trip to Germany and the German boy, who was my host, asked “Have you heard about our Wirtschaftsgemeinschaft? It will guarantee our living standard”.

Neither his English nor my German was up to translating the word, so an explanation had to wait until we got home. When I mentioned it, several other boys said that their hosts had asked exactly the same question. So it was obviously something they had been taught in school. It was 1958.

Our teacher explained that the word meant “economic community” and it had been created the previous year by a treaty between Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux countries. We talked about it for a while and thought it was a great idea that these former enemy countries were getting together to co-operate with each other and improve their lives. Most boys had fathers or uncles who had been in the war and it seemed a hopeful sign of future peace but we didn’t think of it as something we in Britain would be joining.

“But remember” said our teacher “This shows a big difference between the traditions of England and Germany. You would not be taught a political opinion as fact like that in a British school”.

Of course, when we came to our conclusion that the EU (then the EEC) was a good thing, we did so in total ignorance. We didn’t know what the treaty contained, what institutions (if any) it set up and what its political objectives were. For many years people called it “The Common Market” and thought it was a co-operative trade agreement between sovereign countries.

When I went to work in the Sixties I studied calf rearing and animal feed production techniques with a Dutch company with which our firm made a technology sharing agreement. The Dutch are quite like us and so were their farming and feed production but all their prices for foods were very much higher than ours – things like wheat, beef and milk powder. As an industrial country, Britain had a free trade policy for food with the whole world. The Dutch were in “The Common Market” and their prices were driven up by the high levies and customs duties imposed on food coming from outside Europe. This was the Common Agricultural Policy.

We started to pay these needlessly high prices from 1973 when we joined the “The Common Market”. In 1993 the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development said “an average family of four in Britain pays approximately and extra £940 a year as a result of artificially high agricultural prices. It will be more today. Just think how much that has come to over your lifetime. Your parents might well have been able to get you through university without a student loan, if they had been able to keep the money in their pockets.

It was this wicked waste of resources – the grain, butter and beef mountains caused by guaranteed high EU prices which first started me questioning the European project.

Those food mountains were dumped on the world market at well below the cost of production, putting many Third World farmers out of business and thus increasing the likelihood of famine as their countries were less able to feed themselves. The cost of that evil has also been borne by your parents’ taxes. Britain’s fishing fleet was destroyed at the same time and is now a shadow of its former self.

So what was the political programme driving this strange policy? It certainly was not merely establishing a “Common Market” – not even one with the rules of a lunatic asylum. I now quote from Jean Monnet who has been called “The Father of Europe”. Addressing the Washington Press Club on April 30 1952 he spoke of the European Coal and Steel Community, the fore-runner of the all-embracing “Common Market”. He said “In this challenging time we are naturally encountering difficulties. THEY ARE THE BIRTH PANGS ATTENDING THE CREATION OF A UNITED STATES OF EUROPE”.

A German politician expressed his view rather more robustly in 1951. Dr. Seebohm, Minister of Commerce in Dr. Adenauer’s government said “Will free Europe join Germany? Germany is the heart of Europe and the limbs must adjust to the heart, not the heart to the limbs”. Germany has continued to be very successful in making the nascent European state to serve its requirements ever since.

“The Common Market”, freer trade between member states and so on were all part of a gradual step-by-step process – abolishing the national democracies of Europe and making them into mere provinces under a single European government with no pretence of democratic accountability. Or consent. That was, is and ever more shall be the aim of the continuing process of European integration as the unelected Commission in Brussels and other institutions gather ever more power to themselves.

As early as 1947 Peter Thorneycroft, later Chancellor of the Exchequer and chairman of the Conservative party wrote in “Design for Europe”

“No government dependent on a democratic vote could possibly agree in advance to the sacrifice that any adequate plan must involve. The British people must be led slowly and unconsciously into the abandonment of their traditional economic defences…..They must not be asked”.

And that is how the EU project has always progressed, running away by stealth from democratic responsibility to the people, to undemocratic institutions in Europe which remain in power whoever you vote for.

Here is a time line of deceit and arrogance by Edward Heath, the prime minister who took us in

1970 THE LIE DIRECT “There will be no blueprint for a federal Europe”

1971 “There is no question of any erosion of essential national sovereignty”

“There are some in this country who fear that in going into Europe we shall in some way sacrifice independence and sovereignty. These fears, I need hardly say, are completely unjustified”.

1975 “There is no danger of a single currency”.

Yet on 1 November 1991 in an interview with Peter Sissons

Sissons: “The single currency, the United States of Europe: was that on your mind when you took Britain in?”

Heath: “Of course, yes”

The deceitfulness of politicians is not uniquely Conservative . Whose election manifesto do you think I am quoting here?

“We’ll protect British industry against unfair foreign competition”

“We’ll negotiate a withdrawal from the EEC which has drained our natural resources and destroyed jobs”. That was Tony Blair’s manifesto in 1983. Gordon Brown’s was the same.

The EU has destroyed British jobs. The cumulative adverse balance of trade amounts to some £300 billion – so our most successful export to the EU has been British jobs – mostly skilled, hi tech, well-paid British jobs. In exchange we have got shelf stacking and spanner and screwdriver work. This is why your job prospects are so poor today. .

The majority of laws passed by our Parliament today are required by the EU. The EU tells the government what laws it must make and the government whips its MPs to vote for them. So it looks democratic but it isn’t. We and our interests do not come into it at all. No wonder the main parties all ratted on their promise of a referendum on the EU constitution, renamed the Lisbon treaty! Parliament is a marionette. We can vote to change who sits there but whilst we remain in the EU, it is not we the people but Brussels which pulls their strings.

Mark Leonard, a convinced Europhile explained the process very well under the heading “How the EU deceives its way to power”

“Like an invisible hand, the EU operates through existing political structures… There are no European courts, legislatures or business regulations on display in London. The British House of Commons, British law courts and British civil servants are still there but they uphold and implement European law. By creating common standards that are implemented through national institutions, the EU can envelope countries without becoming a target for hostility”

Does it matter? Mr. van Rompuy, Baroness Ashton, Senhor Barroso and the EU Commissioners are our real government for many of the major policies which affect us all – from world trade and climate change to the way our dustbins are collected and the permitted curvature of our cucumbers.

They may be the kindest, wisest people with only our best interests at heart. But if they or their successors are not endowed with wisdom and good judgement and they do not have Britain’s best interests at heart, what then? They were not appointed democratically and we cannot get rid of them democratically – whoever we send to Parliament, whoever lives in No 10 Downing Street – not as long as we remain locked inside the structures of the EU. So, if you have a form of government and policies which you cannot alter by voting, what have you got? Senhor Barroso calls it an “empire” and we are in one of its provinces.

He should know. He’s president of the EU Commission.

In exchange for giving up any real democracy by imperceptible stages , they promised us economic growth and stability. We haven’t got it, have we? Ask the people of Ireland and the people of Greece. We would be suffering as bad a fate as theirs – destruction of public services and unemployment on a scale far greater than anything we have here, if we too were shackled to the euro currency with an exchange rate and interest rate which did not suit our economy.

When the euro was founded, it was claimed it would be as sound as the Deutsche Mark and no country would be responsible for another country’s debt. Look at it now! We knew then that Greece and the other “Club Med” countries had lied about their finances to get in. So did the EU authorities. This tragedy for these countries is seen as an opportunity by the EU to bring in a single, Europe-wide economic and fiscal government which will be even more anti democratic. The present crisis was foreseen and intended. It is what the EU calls a “beneficial crisis” – for the advance of EU power, that is.

The countries of Europe, however they organise their relationships, amongst each other will always be important trading partners for Britain.

We can be on perfectly good, neighbourly terms with them without being part of a European state. We do not have to become a state of the union to trade with America, nor a province of China to trade with China. It is a big, wide world out there with economies offering far greater prospects than the sclerotic, over regulated economy of the EU, distorted and tortured by the political imposition of an unworkable currency union. Even the EU commission admits that the cost of its regulation is over 5% of EU GDP whilst the claimed economic stimulus of the Single Market is said to be around 1-2%. So, even by its own figure the EU is a drag on all the economies of Europe, equivalent to the whole production of the economy of the Netherlands.

Exports to the countries of the EU account for about 10% of our GNP (although it is declining) and a roughly similar amount goes to the rest of the world (although that is increasing). The remaining 80% is purely domestic and internal. So we are bearing the huge dead weight of EU regulation on 90% of our economy quite needlessly for the sake of what we send to Europe.

The great selling point of the EU was security, prosperity and stability. That has proved to be an illusion. It hasn’t worked, it doesn’t work, it can’t work.

For a timid, obscure, offshore province of an inward-looking, economically declining European Empire, the future is decidedly bleak. Benjamin Franklin wisely remarked that a country which tried to trade freedom for wealth would end up possessing neither and deservedly so.

There is a great, wide world out there, full of opportunity for a confident, free country, trading with the vibrant, rising economies of the developing world and renewing its links with the Commonwealth countries which were so shamefully treated when we joined the EU.

As we have seen, the EU will not bail us out. We are expected to bail it out.

Back around 1983 when Tony Blair committed himself to getting us out of the EU, Ken Clarke remarked “The great thing about Europe is that it makes most of Labour’s policies illegal”. That was Old Labour, of course. It is often forgotten that the principle of market competition is built into the EU, into everything. That is why we have ruinous Private Finance Initiative in the NHS and elsewhere. According to the EU, the NHS is part of an EU market for health services, geared to the interests of corporate business. So is the Post Office and every other public institution.

Even that bastion of the free market, the United States does not have that written into its constitution. So Labour or any other government has no choice but to go along with privatisation. There is an unholy alliance between government and corporate capital, enforced by the EU. New Labour was the EU’s obedient slave. As long as it was wedded to the EU it really had no choice but its enthusiasm for the corporate trough was decidedly unseemly.

This alliance of the power of the state (in this case the EU super state) to that of big business has a name – corporatism. It was how Mussolini defined fascism. Henry Wallace, the 33rd Vice President of the United States knew it well and described its aims thus in the 1940s

“Their final objective, towards which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection”.

Before we throw away more money (which we haven’t got) into the insatiable, unappeasable maw of a nasty authoritarian state and crucifying currency system, we need to renew our own institutions, especially our Parliament as truly sovereign, responsible to us alone and worthy of respect. Then we can take our place in the world as a moderately sized, decent, independent democracy on good terms with everybody and at ease with ourselves.